Designer Focus: Ken Fulk

When longtime clients and friends of designer Ken Fulk were ready to build their dream getaway home, they requested a tribute to Mexican modernism.

Fulk writes about the experience in the November issue of Architectural Digest: “The clients had long admired the work of the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, and they had hoped to one day have a house designed by his vaunted firm. Through the combined efforts of my team, Víctor Legorreta (Ricardo’s son and successor) and project architect Marcela Cortina Rodríguez, and the clients, who were intimately involved throughout the process, a collective narrative developed. From the beginning, this house was going to be grand—not only in scale but in aesthetic. Legorreta designed a low-slung 30,000-square-foot house that slowly reveals itself as you enter and wend your way through a series of spaces, eventually leading up to a full view of the Sea of Cortez in all its azure splendor. For such a large house, it’s imperative that you don’t experience it all at once, but instead there’s a sense of exploration when you aren’t quite sure what’s going to come next.

‘We wanted to create a big surprise as you entered the house,’ says Legorreta of the unassuming entrance that leads to a two-story central courtyard painted in the hot-pink hue that has been synonymous with his family name since his father started the firm in 1965. ‘This sense of mystery is very common in Mexican architecture. It is an architecture about emotions, one that keeps you discovering as you wander through it. From there you go to smaller courtyards and gardens of even smaller scale that create special atmospheres for the more intimate spaces.’”